Oct 20, 2023 · 56m · more-or-less
#19: Answering for Misinformation: The New York Times Needs to be Held To Account · More or Less Podcast
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In this episode of the More or Less podcast, the co-hosts critically examine mainstream media accountability and platform moderation during wartime, evaluate diplomatic tensions and emerging spatial computing technologies, and debate the structural transformation of venture capital in a post-ZIRP economic landscape.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.5 Guest teaching 3.4 Guest disagreement 3.9 The hosts pushing back 4.1
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 29:48 Sam dismisses moral equivalence as 'not civilization'
Sam forcefully rejects diplomatic compromise with extremist groups, insisting that there are pockets of 'not civilization' with which civilized society cannot negotiate.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 24:01 Jessica and Brit dismantle the influencer diplomacy thesisJessica and Brit bluntly push back against Sam's notion that celebrities like The Rock can anchor trustworthy journalism, arguing that commercial influencers would lose their audience instantly.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 53:25 Sam redefines post-ZIRP seed milestones as trapeze without a netSam reframes modern startup funding dynamics for founders, explaining why raising capital to reach break-even is essential now that downstream multi-stage safety nets have collapsed.
The host holds their own ▶ 33:25 Jessica leverages reporting from the Commerce Secretary's China missionJessica displays definitive journalistic authority by describing her presence inside high-level U.S.-China bilateral trade meetings to disprove the notion that conversational diplomacy alone prevents geopolitical rupture.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| More or Less Animated Opening Title Sequence | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | The show opens with casual banter about workouts before Dave shares the somber news of Dr. Roland Griffiths' death and his seminal research on psilocybin. The atmosphere is warm, collaborative, and reflective. | |
| VC Check-In: The Chaos of AGM Season | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | The co-hosts discuss venture capital Annual General Meeting (AGM) season, explaining its purpose for listeners while lightly teasing typical GP and LP dynamics. Disagreements are purely playful and collegial. | |
| Media Accountability: The New York Times Misinformation Controversy | 8 | 4 | 6 | 4 | Sam forcefully attacks The New York Times for prematurely attributing a hospital blast to Israeli forces based on Hamas statements. Jessica demonstrates exceptional domain expertise as a media founder, dissecting breaking newsroom incentives, live-desk SEO pressures, and the WSJ/Semafor reporting on Iran. | |
| Rebuilding Societal Trust: The Influencer Diplomacy Proposal | 5 | 3 | 6 | 7 | Sam proposes a 'YPO for influencers' to serve as trusted societal consensus-builders during crises. Jessica and Brit immediately reject the proposal, pointing out that mega-influencers like The Rock rely on advertising dollars and flee controversial geopolitical topics. | |
| Diplomatic Strains: Middle East Accords and China Restrictions | 7 | 4 | 3 | 4 | The panel discusses the limits of diplomacy following Jared Kushner's interview and U.S. chip restrictions against China. Jessica cites her firsthand experience traveling with the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to Beijing to illustrate how dialogue frequently fails to halt trade escalations. | |
| Spatial Computing Debate: Avatars and Virtual Connection Dynamics | 4 | 3 | 3 | 5 | Brit floats whether VR and photorealistic avatars could improve global connection compared to text, but Sam and Dave counter that synthetic avatars will serve as antisocial entertainment echo chambers rather than prosocial bridges. | |
| Platform Moderation Dilemmas and European Union Regulations | 6 | 4 | 4 | 3 | The conversation shifts to platform moderation and the European Union's warning letters to TikTok. Brit cites specific regulatory mandates regarding minors and illegal content, while Sam notes platforms are incentivized to demote or dump news entirely rather than navigate moderation liability. | |
| Deconstructing Post-ZIRP Venture Capital and AI Startups | 7 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Dave directly interrogates Sam's 86-slide deck on the end of the post-ZIRP venture capital factory model. Dave pushes back sharply on Sam's thesis that AI is a 'killing field' for seed startups, prompting Sam to clarify that while small software teams can thrive, capital-intensive multi-stage AI rounds face structural doom. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Sam Lessin: Someone At The New York Times Must Resign Over Misinformation
“Someone needs to resign from the New York Times, right? Like the disinformation story, which we've all talked about for a generation in terms of where the world is at and where technology is obviously going is finally very practically and publicly coming home …”
Sam Lessin: Platforms Will Drop News, Driving Misinformation To Encrypted Channels
“The social networks are going to do the smart thing, which is they're going to say, screw it. This isn't worth the pain, right? We're just not going to like care about that. We're just going to demote this stuff just as we've done globally. Like we can't, it's…”
Jessica Lessin: Media Trust Is Fragmenting From Legacy Outlets To Individuals
“The trust, our trust nodes are just fragmenting and they're, we, this has been the trend we trust. You know, sub stack writers and individual publications and our friends in addition to in some cases, you know, more legacy publications.”
Sam Lessin: When Trust Erodes, Elites Retreat To Expensive Private Newsletters
“In times when trust gets eroded in the public, you know, places for news, that the elites all retreat to very expensive newsletters.”
Sam Lessin: AI And Anti-AI Detection Tools Will Fail Symmetrically
“There's not going to be AI, anti AI detectors that work. It's a war of attrition”
Jessica Lessin: Celebrity Influencers Are Not The Future Of News Media
“The news network brought to you by The Rock is not the future news.”
Sam Lessin: Harvard's Historic Value Was Networking Elites, Not Academic Rigor
“Like, Harvard is not a dramatically better school than most other schools, but, like, candidly, they selected for, and the whole, historically, saying we want to train the world's next generation of leaders and get them to all know each other as eighteen-year-…”
Jessica Lessin: Realistic Digital Avatars Can Never Substitute For In-Person Meetings
“I don't think just an initial form factor being more realistic is a substitute for having a chance to meet someone.”
Sam Lessin: Realistic VR Avatars Will Increase Social Fracturing, Not Connection
“I think the challenge will be that you'll end up spending more and more time actually just talking to computers and no one, right. Just talking to yourself. Right. In some various forms and actually your need to talk to other people for entertainment, which th…”
Sam Lessin: AR And VR Are Fundamentally Antisocial Technologies Driven By Loneliness
“To me, AR and VR are not fundamentally social technologies. They're really interesting technologies. And I think they will happen because mathematically people are lonely and they want more voices and they want more affirmation and they'll get it in digital sp…”
Dave Morin: Meta Controls Misinformation Much Better Than Twitter Currently Does
“They clearly don't have it under control, or at least Twitter, whatever Twitter calls itself, doesn't. Meta seems to be in a much better position.”
Sam Lessin: Twitter's Unmoderated Hands-Off Content Strategy Is Intellectually Correct
“There's a Twitter strategy, which intellectually, don't shoot the messenger. Intellectually, I actually agree with, right, which is like, it's not our job to moderate this stuff. Go nuts. Like, I actually think that is the intellectually correct position.”
Sam Lessin: Fact-Checking Online Content Is An Unsolvable War Of Attrition
“So I think the mistake is this idea that, you know, if you think about figuring out what's real or not real online, it's like a hot potato. No, it's an unsolvable problem. It's a war of attrition.”
Sam Lessin: The Silicon Valley VC Factory Model Failed And Won't Return
“I do think that the Silicon Valley factory, you know, of, you know, where a bunch of, especially in the last few years, a bunch of people who are effectively asset managers convinced everyone they were venture capitalists to get higher fees and kind of structu…”
Sam Lessin: AI Will Create Billionaires From Five-Person Niche Software Teams
“My basic model for AI is I think it's gonna make a ton of people like billionaires on niche software applications in like all sorts of cool ways. Like it's a great place. There's never been a better time to be a five person team and make an absolute fortune.”
Sam Lessin: AI Startups Seeking Multi-Round Venture Financing Are Terrible Investments
“The thing you do not want to be is an AI company that's intending to raise round based financing and be through. And I think that's a lot of the points I try to make in the deck is why that's true and like why it's a terrible place to invest.”
Sam Lessin: Incredible Era For Founders, Terrible Era For Multi-Stage VCs
“I think we're an incredible time for business formation, just a terrible time for the multi-stage firms that are designed to buy up By putting more and more equity in, right, over time for companies that want to consume it.”
Jessica Lessin: Investors Without Macro Safety Nets Will Only Back Proven Operators
“If you're an investor who is now backing a founder without a safety net, you are gonna be damn choosy about which founders you back, and you are gonna back the cream of the cream founders who actually know how to do the maneuvers.”